100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go

SINCE 1772, THIS BREEZY BOULEVARD lined with marble benches and antique iron streetlamps has been a destination for habaneros looking to escape overcrowded conditions in Habana Vieja and Centro Habana—the two neighborhoods bifurcated by the Prado—for an evening stroll, a lunchtime tryst or to conduct a bit of informal business. It’s reminiscent of a European boulevard with good reason—Madrid’s Prado and Barcelona’s Ramblas were used as blueprints for Havana’s famous promenade. Over the years, various additions and renovations beautified this popular public space but it wasn’t until renowned landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier lent his vision to the Prado, adding the bronze lions guarding its entrance near Parque Central and the sorely-needed shade trees, that it achieved the elegance it exudes today. Forestier had a heavy hand in shaping modern Havana, having designed parts of the University of Havana, Parque Almendares and other iconic spots around town. Along with the Malecón (where the boulevard leads), there is no better place to watch the pulse and swirl of the city and its inhabitants than the Prado.

The pastime provides free and ripe opportunity to meet and greet—until it’s closed to the public, something which occurred when Karl Lagerfeld and the House of Chanel presented their cruise wear collection along the Prado in 2016. After centuries of being a place of respite and recreation for habaneros, suddenly it was off limits. While it provided work for some Cubans and those living right on the boulevard rented space on their balconies for $10CUC a head, not everyone was on board (pun intended!) with the program. This came right on the heels of the Fast and Furious 8 filming in Havana where people were kept from walking their streets and accessing their homes during the shoot. In his 2017 book Cuba-US Relations: Obama and Beyond, Cubanologist Arnold August categorizes these two events (and many more) as hipster imperialism, a phenomenon that brings the global entertainment economy in conflict with Cuban values—in this case, access to public places. Rubbing salt into the wound is the fact that Cubans are huge movie buffs and fashionistas; they wanted to see all the wonderful clothing and perhaps snap a selfie with Vin Diesel. Still, the Hollywood/Parisian road show came and went and the Prado quickly returned to its normal rhythm.

On weekends, the entire promenade is flanked with artists selling their work, creating new ones and giving classes to local kids in painting, drawing, ceramics, and photography. On Saturdays, a semblance of Cuba’s system of trading houses is in full swing. Before buying and selling of homes was legalized in 2011, the only way for an individual to acquire a different home was to trade theirs with someone else. Known as the "permuta, it was a long, laborious process (two years looking and finagling was not uncommon) with much jumping through hoops to find an available, appropriate house, pay some money under the table to cover the difference (legitimate but not legal" as my professor friend says) and process the transfer of title and other paperwork.

Se Permuta, a full-length comedy by notable Cuban director Juan Carlos Tabío, is full of social commentary and insight.

Things have changed mightily since then—Havana is now peppered with real estate agencies sporting banks of computers and agents ready to pull up multiple listings across all neighborhoods with detailed descriptions and full-color photos. But the permuta system still works; you can see the old school action on the stretch of the Prado near Hotel Sevilla.

SPANISH CONQUISTADORES WERE LUKEWARM ON the crocodile-shaped island that Columbus stumbled upon in 1492, foiled in their attempts to find the motherlodes of gold, the apocryphal El Dorado, which drove many a conquistador to ruin. They gave short shrift to the Antilles’ biggest island as a result, preferring to run roughshod over Hispaniola and Mexico, where the streets were supposedly paved with precious metals. Early explorers even failed to agree on what to call the island: before settling on Cuba, a bastardization of an indigenous name upon which experts can’t agree, it was known as Juana, Fernandina, San Diego, and Ave Maria Alfa y Omega. Where to settle Cuba’s capital was also an improvised, uncertain affair, skipping from Santiago de Cuba to Batabanó, before San Cristóbal de la Habana was founded in 1519. Swampy, and prone to mosquito swarms and flooding, Havana wasn’t the ideal spot, but boasted a deep, navigable bay which proved highly attractive to Spanish sugar barons who berthed their galleons to offload slaves and packed the holds with sugar, getting filthy rich in the process. The geographical location, of course, was also perfect for pirates. The boom you hear each night at 9 p.m. sharp is the cañonazo (the cannon shot), a holdover from those days when the bay was closed to all boat traffic, a giant chain strung across the entry.

Habana Vieja, the colonial city that sprung up and spread like herpes in a whorehouse—quickly, virally, indiscriminately—is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Cuba’s #1 tourist destination. People from all over the world come to ogle its spectacular colonial palaces, walk its cobblestone streets, and explore its beautiful (and not so) nooks and crannies. Managing a visit to Habana Vieja can be a bear—there are too many tourists for the too narrow streets, often trailed by aggressive hustlers (jineteros in local lingo) and what real life looks like is best appreciated off the beaten track and away from the carefully restored sections. The three best tips I have for folks wanting to experience this part of town with minimum hassle is: don’t book your accommodation here (it’s dead at night and you’ll be besieged by hustlers as soon as you step out the door); hail a bici-taxi for a cheap, backstreet tour; and spend a morning hopping from one beautiful plaza to another.

Cuba has seven cultural and two natural sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Check it out: whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/cu.

My favorite of all is Plaza Vieja, a wide-open square lined with colonnaded buildings hiding interesting sites. There’s a luthier workshop, Fototeca (the national photo gallery), Cuba’s only camera obscura providing live, 360° views of the neighborhood—sheets flapping on the line, dogs wagging their tails—and various places to appreciate the best in Cuban contemporary art, including the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, a fine art gallery housed in a beautiful colonial mansion. For good people watching and refreshments, there’s a microbrewery on one corner of the plaza and a cafe on another—the whole bean coffee here makes a special gift or souvenir; both places have outside tables. Heading northeast, you hit Plaza de San Francisco de Asis, nicknamed pigeon plaza by Cubans who like to come here and whip the birds into a feeding frenzy around the central fountain. Anchoring this irregularly shaped plaza is the Lonja de Comercio, a luxurious office building housing international press bureaus, joint ventures, and apartments like you might find in Manhattan. Looking up is always a good way to pull back the veil on Havana’s charms: across the plaza is the Basilica de San Francisco de Asis, built in 1719 and adorned with one of the highest bell towers—it flirts with 125 feet—in the hemisphere. Once the house of worship for the city’s elite, these days the Basilica is a classical concert hall and headquarters of Ars Longa, the national baroque orchestra. International musicians are often invited to play here and if you get the chance to attend a performance among the gilded angels and the fabulous trompe l’oeil backdrop, grab it. Guarding the entrance here is a statue of the Caballero de Paris, a brilliant, but tormented fellow who wandered the streets of Habana Vieja reciting prose and poetry, dying in poverty but immortalized in bronze. Stroking his beard and making a wish is a Havana tradition long observed, which is why it shines so brightly.

A few blocks north is the Plaza de Armas. Originally established in 1582, it’s the oldest square in Cuba. Among its quirky attributes is the only wooden street in Havana (in front of the Museo de la Ciudad), the antique book bazaar ringing the central park, and the statue of La Giraldilla, the symbol of Havana crowning the ornate roof of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza (and emblazoned on every bottle of Havana Club rum); this is the hemisphere’s oldest colonial fort. On the northeast corner of this plaza is El Templete, a neo-classical pantheon celebrating the place where Havana was founded in 1519. In reality, the ceiba tree—an important symbol to Cubans the world over—spreading its crown over El Templete is what actually marks the spot of the first mass in Havana and the founding of the city. But like much in Cuba, even this symbolic tree is a trick: city authorities have cut down and replanted ceibas here repeatedly, as recently as 2016 when the previous tree was confirmed to be termite-infested (the metaphor was not lost on locals). No matter for superstitious Cubans married to their traditions: every November 16, people stand in line for hours to take three turns around the tree, intoning wishes for health, wealth, or a visa. Finally, two blocks northeast of here is the Plaza de la Catedral, site of Havana’s baroque cathedral, built between 1748 and 1787. It’s prettiest at night, when the crowds slip away and the unequal towers and facade are softly lit. At other times, it’s clogged with tourists snapping photos of Cuban women smoking cigars so tourists will snap photos of them (for a fee) and people making their way to El Bodeguita del Medio for an overpriced, watered-down mojito. For me, the most interesting places to visit around this plaza are the Taller Experimental de Gráfica (see Chapter 19) in a small alley off the southwestern corner where Cuban printmakers are hard at work creating under bright lights, the air thick with the smell of ink and sweat, and the Centro Wilfredo Lam (headquarters of the Bienal de la Habana; see Chapter 8), a contemporary art gallery named for and featuring Cuba’s most celebrated artist. Known in art circles as a tropical surrealist, Lam is the quintessential Cuban mongrel—an exotic mix of Chinese, African, and Criollo (those of Spanish descent born in Cuba). I’m surprised there isn’t a cocktail named after him. Having one of the best galleries in the city bearing his name is honor enough.

LA HABANA VIEJA—LITERALLY OLD HAVANA, THE first permanent settlement in the city, dating from 1519—is the number one tourist attraction in the country, though I predict its status will be challenged by Fidel Castro’s grave in Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba (see Chapter 71). Wandering the cobblestone streets linking colonial plazas, each one more picturesque than the last, is a lesson in history; branch off and out of the painstakingly restored areas (what Cuban’s call Disneyland for obvious reasons) and into the ’hood, however, and an entirely different world unfolds. Here, laundry hangs listlessly from balconies held up by wooden scaffolding, chunks of mortar crash to the sidewalk too often, shirtless men crowd tables under streetlamps shouting as they slap down dominos, and exhausted housewives haul buckets of water to third floor apartments via a rope and pulley system. In this part of town, running water is only available every other day, few people have air conditioning, and the daily struggle is defined by how families are going to put food on the table. In short, Habana Vieja is a tale of two cities. For insight into the historical context that has resulted in the grand contradictions evident today—luxurious colonial palaces next to falling down tenements; well-heeled Cubans and tourists sidestepping mounds of household garbage; the sound of lobster sizzling on the grill mixing with the knife sharpener’s peal—the area known as La Loma del Ángel, behind the Iglesia del Santo Ángel Custodio (1847), is a good place to start.

Just a handful of years ago, this pocket neighborhood exemplified the dichotomy of modern-day Havana, with boarded up state stores and bakeries cheek-by-jowl with new colonizers including moneyed artists and designers, huge potholes in streets running alongside freshly painted homes, and nary a tourist in sight. Some people would venture to the church where José Martí was baptized and where the first (and to date, still most famous) novel exploring interracial dynamics, Cecilia Valdés (1882) is set, but few ventured beyond.

Cecilia Valdes by Cirilo Villaverde is the story of a beautiful mulatta and her star-crossed romance with a young white man of means, who unbeknownst to either, is her half-brother.

Today, the little hillside neighborhood of La Loma del Ángel is a tourist attraction. The cobblestone streets are completely repaired and closed to traffic, little sidewalk cafés with chic umbrellas serve crepes and fruit salads, there are no lack of artists’ studios where visitors can browse and buy, and the cultural events organized by Papito and ArteCorte (see Chapter 42, Playgrounds, for other initiatives by this socially responsible business) are a spontaneous carnival. Just a few blocks outside of this enclave is where the real Habana Vieja lives.

AS THE BEST-PRESERVED HISTORICAL CITY in the Americas, Habana Vieja is chock full of gorgeous buildings inside and out. Dating from the 16th century through the early 20th, some are in disrepair or falling down, more are downright crumbling, while many others gleam. Others still seem to be undergoing perpetual renovation. File under this last category the Capitol building. Anyone from the United States will feel an eerie déjà-vu beholding the Capitolio—it was modeled on the US Capitol and looks like a carbon copy, albeit flanked by palm trees, its marble plazas a beehive of activity with skateboarding kids, peanut sellers and photographers. Before construction began on this monumental public work, this was a military parade ground, a bullfighting ring, a botanical garden, and train station—the city’s first.

As soon as the first shovel hit the dirt, the Capitolio project was beset with problems, from the cost ($20 million US, all told), to accidents and delays—ground was broken in 1912, but the building wasn’t finished until 1929. According to Claudia Lightfoot in her exquisitely researched book Cities of the Imagination: Havana, a large slice of the $20 million disappeared in graft and straightforward theft....one politician’s house, now the Museo Napoleónico in Vedado, was supposedly entirely built from materials filched from the site. Patterns set in motion a century ago still hold strong: the refurbishment of the Museo de la Música (a building of eclectic styles dating from 1902) has been ongoing for more than a decade and many neighbors have improved their living spaces with materials from the construction site. The Capitolio itself has been undergoing renovations since 2012 (who knows in that time how many resources have been detoured, as Cubans say) and was opened to visitors as this book went to print. Insiders tell me it’s spectacular and that the time to see it is now while the renovation is fresh and accessible to the public—word on the street is that this building, long the headquarters of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment, will once again house the Parliament once the renovation is finally finished.

Everything about the Capitolio is over-the-top extravagant, from the grand marble staircase guiding people inside to its 300-foot high dome. The Statue of the Republic guarding the entrance hallway is enormous, weighing 49 tons and covered entirely in 22-carat gold leaf. It’s almost 65 feet tall and if the statistics are credible, it’s among the largest indoor statues in the world. If there was any doubt about Cubans’ propensity for flaunting their wealth and gains, no matter how ill-gotten, the Capitolio dispels it—quickly. No expense was spared in the construction and decor here. Says Cuban historian Ciro Bianchi, the diamond embedded in the floor (known as Kilometer 0—from this point all distances in Cuba are measured), is from the crown of the last Russian czar. What Bianchi doesn’t mention is that the diamond was stolen under mysterious circumstances—further providing evidence for the Cuban grift and graft stereotype that’s so pervasive. Ironically, the two statues flanking the stairway entrance are entitled Labor and Virtue. The czar’s diamond eventually graced the desk of President Grau. Today, the real gem is kept in a bank vault—or so they say. The Salon de los Pasos Perdidos (the Room of the Lost Steps, so called because the cavernous hall plays acoustic tricks on visitors, their footsteps being swallowed in their wake), with its arched, gilded ceiling and geometric marble floors, is breathtaking. I admit I’m a sucker for libraries—my first job out of university was at the San Francisco Public Library and I’ve had a romantic interlude or two in some closed stacks—but the one here will make even the hardest of heart swoon. It can all be a bit overwhelming and give you a stiff neck admiring all the friezes and finery; when you need a break, head to the tranquil interior garden, a hidden oasis few know about.

PEOPLE TALK ABOUT DOWNTOWN HAVANA, which is a misnomer; asking a local how to get to downtown or the city center is met with a question mark written across their face. Havana turns on different axes, so center or downtown depends on your perspective. There’s Vedado, which for many young Cubans, is the center of all the action; there’s Habana Vieja, where tourists spend the most time (and money) and where Havana was founded 500 years ago, so technically could be considered downtown; and what about Centro Habana? Sure, central figures in the name of the city’s grittiest and liveliest of neighborhoods, but even Cubans can’t agree precisely where it ends and Habana Vieja begins. But there’s a center-of-the-Cuban-universe feeling provided by sitting on a shady bench in Parque Central, taking in the 1950s cars honking the Godfather theme, eavesdropping on the fellas debating the latest in baseball (known as the "esquina caliente, the hot corner, this is a park highlight), and sneaking sidelong glances at the Rastafarians—in quotes because dreadlocks do not a rasta make. The center of the park is anchored by an iconic statue of the Cuban apostle," José Martí and directly across the street is one of the jewels in Havana’s architectural crown: the Gran Teatro de la Habana.

This theater has been the headquarters of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba since 1959, taking a brief (for Cuba) recess during renovations concluded in 2014. Upon re-opening, it was renamed the Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso, but people still call it simply, the Gran Teatro or the Lorca—shorthand for the Sala García Lorca, the 1500-seat theater where main events are held. The building facade is a poem cast in stone, marble and bronze, exquisitely lit at night, with soaring sculptures representing Theatre, Music, Education, and Charity. Its majesty can be a bit overwhelming and stands as testament to the roots and power of Spanish wealth and influence in Cuba: inaugurated in 1915 after a major overhaul, this was once the Palacio del Centro Gallego, the social club and welcome wagon for transplanted Spaniards. Prior to the Spanish renovation, this space housed the Teatro Tacón, which opened in 1838 with a performance of Verdi’s opera Aida; since then, the list of luminaries who have tread the boards here is long, including Andres Segovia, Ernesto Lecuona, Eliades Ochoa, and of course, Alicia Alonso.

The renovations put a completely new face on the theater, which was in dire need. The facade was scrubbed clean of decades of Havana filth, the ceiling frescoes restored, new seats were installed and the floors now sparkle; the grand ballroom upstairs sits empty, but it’s easy to imagine the Spanish upper crust waltzing around the marble dance floor, peeking at eligible bachelors behind a flirty wave of a fan. There are some interesting sculptures up here and photography opportunities galore, thanks to the wall of windows wrapping around the corner. There are daily tours with a lethargic docent short on facts, but getting access to the renovated spaces and the art gallery upstairs make it worth the $5CUC. The theater re-do included the inauguration of an attached restaurant—Café Intermezzo and the theater’s La Cava is a wonderful place to get a post-performance glass of wine. During intermission, your best bet is to slip into the back bar accessible through a side door inside the theater, a local secret. After dance performances, the ballerinas often have a beer